When Stephen Yeo began looking for a CRM solution, he found more functionality than he needed. "All these CRM vendors were very proud of their functionality," says Yeo, director of marketing for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa for Wyse Technology Inc., a global thin-client PC maker. "They all showed me tons of functionality, which was impressive, but I didn't need 90 percent of it."
What Wyse did need was a cost-effective, simple-to-use, easy-to-deploy CRM application that required no additional IT infrastructure, offered customizable features, and could expand as Wyse grows.
So after a year of evaluating CRM solutions that would enable the $2 billion company to offer its customer-facing staff a single, integrated view of customers, as well as track sales and marketing leads, Wyse began deploying Salesforce.com's Enterprise Edition.
"Salesforce.com offers a product that allows you to do it yourself and get into the product very quickly," Yeo says. "Not a single consultant was needed for this project."
Yeo explains that the company looked at a variety of traditional mid-market solutions, but was put off by the prospect of buying licenses, setting up servers, hiring consultants, and managing its own IT infrastructure. "We couldn't start a small project with just 10 users for less than $100,000," he says. "With Salesforce.com we could get started for $50 per user per month. We didn't need a new IT infrastructure, or consultants, and we were up and running in Europe within a month."
Wyse's CRM project started in the company's three field offices throughout Europe in February 2001 and has since spread through the entire 560-person company, including its dual headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and Hsin-Chu, Taiwan, as well as a field office in Australia.
Wyse has 125 CRM users worldwide--15 people in general management, 50 in sales, 15 in marketing, 15 in support, and 30 in technical presales. Because Enterprise Edition is Web-based, Yeo says, sales representatives can access information on the road or from home. Web-based training also reduces the time and cost to get users up to speed, he says.
Wyse used a variety of home-grown solutions, along with other applications, including Microsoft Corp.'s Excel and Access, prior to implementing Salesforce.com's Enterprise Edition, Yeo says. "We had very little integration. One of the most obvious problems we had was that we would generate a marketing campaign and leads would come in, and we would never know what happened to them," he says. "Or, a customer might have a technical support issue, and the salesperson could pay them a visit the next day and never know there was a problem."
Another problem before the CRM implementation was tracking the company's global accounts, including Federal Express Corp., Eastman Kodak Co., and Nestle S.A. A Wyse sales executive might sign a new account in Europe and the staff in the Unites States would not know about it and vice versa, Yeo says.
Using Salesforce.com eliminates all of these issues, Yeo says. It also allows Wyse to produce forecasts, track sales leads, and track the leads from a marketing campaign.
"It is now easier to produce a forecast, much easier to track marketing leads, track the response of a campaign, and track sales," Yeo says. He adds that he has seen the number of projects driven by marketing campaigns rise to 40 percent from 10 percent to 20 percent prior to the CRM solution.
Wyse plans to extend its CRM solution: The company is a currently a beta tester of Salesforce.com's offline version, and will implement that product when it is delivered later this year, according to Yeo.
The company is also planning to implement a marketing module that would enable it to generate marketing campaigns and track their success in real time. In addition Wyse is moving to deploy Salesforce.com's Profile module for creating customized screens for each individual user. And Wyse is looking to put its partners online in a secure environment.
The Payoff
Customer: Wyse Technology Inc.
Challenge: Provide all customer-facing Wyse staff with a 360-degree view of the customer that can be accessed from any international office at any time.
Vendor: Salesforce.com
Vendor Solution: Enterprise Edition
Results:

The number of projects driven by marketing campaigns rose to 40 percent from
10 percent to 20 percent prior to the CRM solution.

Productivity has increased because sales representatives can access information on the road or from home.

Web-based training has reduced the time and cost to get users up to speed.